[You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one..]

The fifteenth plate reasserts Gradgrind's role as parent; but whereas he was firm disciplinarian (Plate 3) and reasonable counselor (Plate 1), now he enacts the role of bedside watcher and caregiver, just as Louisa had for her mother in Plate 13. He does not resemble the nattily dressed, middle-aged man of Plate 1 so much as the balding, jowly figure of Plate 4, but here he is anxious, despondent, and even self-condemning as he accepts responsibility for what has befallen his daughter. Louisa in French's plate, too, seems different: her hair is disheveled and her eyesockets sunken. Although French has captioned the plate "'Only Entreat You To Believe, My Favourite Child, That I Have Meant To Do Right'" Gradgrind is silent, deep in thought, and Louisa appears to asleep, so that the moment illustrated must be just prior to the father's leaving his daughter's room.